Charges: Man pummels victim with baseball bat in racist 'rage'

The victim had stayed at the defendant's house the previous night

Dashawn Horne, pictured with his 16-month-old child, was beaten unconscious with a baseball bat in Auburn Jan. 20. He remains in Harborview Medical Center's intensive care unit. The alleged attacker is charged

Dashawn Horne, pictured with his 16-month-old child, was beaten unconscious with a baseball bat in Auburn Jan. 20. He remains in Harborview Medical Center's intensive care unit. The alleged attacker is charged with first-degree assault and malicious harassment, the state's hate crime law.

A man is clinging to life at Harborview Medical Center as his suspected attacker is charged with pummeling him with a baseball bat in a racially motivated "rage" in Auburn.

Julian Tuimauga, 18, is charged with first-degree assault and malicious harassment, Washington's hate crime statute. Witnesses say he issued racial slurs as he battered at man Jan. 20 who stayed in his family's house the previous night and investigators found a cell phone video to corroborate the claims.

Auburn police officers responded to an assault call about 10:21 a.m. in the 600 block of 47th Street Southeast and found Dashawn Horne lying in some rockery in front of the house, breathing but unresponsive. He was bleeding from a head wound and also appeared to have been injured in his jaw, incident reports say.

A Lyft driver told police that he drove to the house to pick up a fare at the request of a woman who lived there. Tuimauga, the woman's brother, reportedly approached the car, aluminum baseball bat in hand, and asked the driver who he was there to pick up.

Horne then approached the car from the side of the house -- the sister had called the car for him -- and Tuimauga reportedly confronted him and argued with him, reports indicate.

The driver said he heard a "thump" and saw Tuimauga hit Horne twice in the head, prompting the victim to fall to the ground, according to Auburn police.

Tuimauga reportedly said, "This is what happens when you bring black people around here" and continued to beat Horne as the Lyft driver went to park two houses away and call 911. The driver claimed he saw the victim try to get up and walk, but fall to the ground again. Tuimauga allegedly took the bat and returned to the house.

Medics took Horne to Harborview Medical Center, where doctors removed parts of his cranium to relieve the pressure of his swelling brain, according to the incident report.

Tuimauga's sister told officers that the victim had been at their house the previous night with another friend and that she called the Lyft driver that morning for both friends. She claimed she did not see the assault, but that her brother broke her bedroom door down and called her "a whore," court documents say.

After police arrested Tuimauga, he allegedly admitted he assaulted the victim "in a rage" because he believed Horne and his sister had sex. He later claimed that he had deleted a video from his phone after the attack and told detectives he planned to show the video to his sister so she would go outside and help the battered man.

A detective recovered the deleted video and it reportedly showed Horne lying face down on the rocks, bleeding, as Tuimauga stood over him yelling racial slurs several times, according to the police report.

Surveillance video recovered from a neighbor's house reportedly showed Tuimauga talking with the victim with a bat in his hands and the victim "falling into the frame" while unconscious. Police say that Tuimauga struck Horne twice while he was unconscious on the ground.

At the time charges were filed Jan. 24, authorities were unsure whether Horne would survive his wounds. A Harborview spokeswoman confirmed that he remained in serious condition in the Intensive Care Unit as of Monday afternoon.